Illinois

Wealthy concrete company owner Marty Ozinga told The Associated Press that he doesn’t plan to spend much of his own money on a congressional bid, saying it probably wouldn’t even approach $350,000.

Ozinga’s ability to rely on his personal wealth is a major card in his favor as the probable late replacement in the race for retiring Rep. Jerry Weller’s (R) seat. The district is expensive, and the Democratic nominee, state Sen. Debbie Halvorson, has been one of the top fundraisers in the country.

Self-funders often emphasize that they want to raise money in addition to providing their own, or they wind up spending far more than they intended to.

Local GOP leaders will pick a replacement Wednesday for New Lenox Mayor Tim Baldermann, who dropped out of the race in February. Ozinga is the favorite.

— Aaron Blake


New York

There isn’t much common ground between retiring Rep. Tom Reynolds (R) and two Democrats, wealthy industrialist Jack Davis and Iraq war veteran Jon Powers, running to replace him. But a longtime pet project of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) might just provide a chance for them all to agree on one thing: that the IRS should be allowed to keep contracting out the services of private tax collectors.

Reynolds’s upstate New York district, hit hard by job losses and a fading workforce, is home to a high concentration of private collecting agencies, many of which get a good deal of business from the current Treasury Department policy that allows for the IRS to contract them out to collect taxes.

Van Hollen’s Taxpayer Abuse and Harassment Protection Act would ban them from being employed by the federal government for tax-collecting purposes — a move that would be much appreciated by traditional civil servants’ unions like the National Treasury Employees Union.

The bill has been pushed unsuccessfully for several Congresses and last cycle was viewed by some to be a finger in the eye of Van Hollen’s Republican counterpart, Reynolds, who as then-chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2006 battled Van Hollen over control of the House.

Still, this may be one case where Van Hollen will be happy to learn of opposition to his legislation. As chairman of the DCCC, it will likely be his job to shepherd either Davis or Powers to victory in November in a battleground district.

The Powers campaign said, “Jon will always vote in the interests of his district.”

— Michael Sherry


Louisiana

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), after filing two formal complaints over ads attacking the Democratic candidate in a Louisiana House race, now wants the IRS to investigate the conservative advocacy group behind the spots.

The DCCC questions whether Freedom’s Watch deserves its tax-exempt status after running advertisements that Democrats consider political. The ads criticize Democrat Don Cazayoux’s position on healthcare and record on tax increases. Cazayoux is running against Republican Woody Jenkins in a special election runoff Saturday.

“Freedom’s Watch is trying to avoid paying taxes by claiming to be tax-exempt, while running campaign ads that benefit a Republican candidate” and the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Brian Wolff, the DCCC’s executive director, in a statement.

The runoff winner will succeed Rep. Richard Baker (R), who left Congress for a lobbying job in February.
Freedom’s Watch spokesman Ed Patru dismissed the DCCC’s call for an investigation as “tactics of intimidation and suppression.”

“The DCCC seems to have an aversion to a robust public policy debate on the important issues of the day,” Patru said in a statement.

Cazayoux was also under attack Tuesday from the NRCC, which launched an ad linking him to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.) signaled Monday that the committee and candidates would be using Pelosi and Obama in their campaigns to tie candidates to liberal ideas, believing that Pelosi and Obama are unpopular in many GOP-leaning districts where House battles are being waged.

The ad says the two national politicians need Cazayoux to win this Saturday’s special election in order to enact their “radical agenda,” and it points to Pelosi’s fundraising for Cazayoux.

The ad buy wasn’t posted to the Federal Election Commission website on Tuesday, but the committee has already spent more than $300,000 defending the seat.

— A.B.